Earlier this month, American Airlines rather abruptly changed its requirements for cashing in miles for frequent flyer tickets. There’s some good news, but, as you might guess, there are some downsides to the new rules, as well.

American stopped offering a stopover with an award ticket. You used to be able to get an award ticket for, say, New York to Paris and back. And then you could add another leg from your home base for travel on a future date to, say, Hawaii or Los Angeles.

No more.

American had a great award called a Oneworld Explorer Award that allowed you to go around the world on a leisurely schedule for not-too-many miles. That award disappeared overnight.

With the American/US Airways merger, the option of cashing in 90,000 miles on US Airways for a round-trip, business class ticket to North Asia disappeared, too; now it’ll take 110,000 miles—a 22% increase.

This change, however, might be considered a positive: Instead of two award levels for a ticket there are now three. So if you can’t get a ticket for the fewest number of miles—25,000 for a domestic ticket—you’ll have two more higher options rather than just that one, 50,000-mile option.

We’ll see how that goes.

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Rudy Maxa, one of America’s premier consumer travel experts, is host and executive producer of public television’s “Rudy Maxa’s World,” the Emmy Award-winning, travel series featuring 91 television episodes on the world’s great destinations as diverse as Korea and Argentina, and from South Africa, Tuscany, and Thailand. His television episodes also air in 121 countries in 22 different languages on Travel Channel International. You may view episodes on Create Travel too.Public radio listeners will remember “The Savvy Traveler,” a show Rudy hosted before he transitioned to television. Today, he hosts America’s #1 travel radio show, “Rudy Maxa’s World,” which has a weekly audience reach of approximately 1.4 million upscale leisure & business travelers via 250+ commercial radio stations, TuneIn.com, active social media platforms, online streaming, and more.Rudy is an award-winning writer with National Geographic Traveler and a former Washington Post investigative reporter and columnist whose writing was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is also a fascinating and informative speaker on the subject of travel today and speaks extensively around the world. If you’re interested in booking him to keynote your event, send your request to rudy@rudymaxa.com.Rudy writes a regularly published e-newsletter that contains personal observations, travel tips, anecdotes, and deals. It's free. If you’re interested in receiving it, please subscribe under the E-newsletter tab at the top of this page, and you will be added to its distribution list.
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